


Fix It

by funnygirlthatbelle13



Series: Helpless [5]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Paralysis, Pining, Rest of the Nein Feature - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23250553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/funnygirlthatbelle13/pseuds/funnygirlthatbelle13
Summary: Caleb hasn’t been the same since the Feeblemind incident, and Jester doesn’t know what to do to make things better between the two of them. Caleb thinks that he’s hurt Jester and is trying to stay away.And that’s before the basilisk comes in.
Relationships: Caleb Widogast & Yasha, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Series: Helpless [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1636885
Comments: 36
Kudos: 192





	Fix It

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys! I’m just gonna warn you up front: this is where the sad shit kicks in. It gets better after this, but this particular installment is not a happy one.

Jester had wanted to get to Rumblecusp as early as possible so that she could start making plans for Travelercon without the familiar last minute panic.

Jester was outnumbered, and they were going to fight a basilisk instead. 

She didn’t want to pout. Really, she didn’t. But everyone seemed to be forgetting that she needed this to go well in order to get her best friend back. Normally, she might have talked to Caleb about this, but Caleb… 

He still wasn’t really talking to her. Hell, he had barely talked to anyone lately. It had been three days since the Feeblemind incident, and Caleb had made himself scarce ever since, only appearing at the tail end of mealtimes to grab a scrap of whatever Caduceus had made before retreating to wherever he had chosen to hide that day. She understood that he needed time to process, but understanding did not mean that a part of her wasn’t screaming to just go and talk to him. Nor did it stop the fire opal ring on her finger from weighing her down, as it had seemed to gain several pounds since its descent from the crows nest. 

They landed on the beach, pulling her out of her thoughts.

“Now, before we go out there, does everyone have their mirror?” Fjord asked them all. 

They each pulled out their mirrors. Beau had remembered that mirrors could help them in this fight, so they had found every single mirror on The Balleater. Fjord nodded tightly.

“Alright, let’s get-“

A great, horrible roar interrupted him mid-sentence as a great serpent emerged from the jungle.

Shit.

****

Despite not having any time to get into position, Caleb was fairly satisfied with how this fight was going. Yasha and Beauregard had climbed onto the creature’s head and were attacking it from up top. Veth had scurried up a palm tree and no one knew exactly where she was now. But her crossbow bolts were hitting, so all was well. Fjord and Caduceus had found some half-crumbled stone to hide behind, using the cover to focus on blasting the creature and mitigating the damage, respectively. That left only him and Jester out in the open, using their mirrors to navigate as best as they could. 

It was hardly ideal, but they were making it work.

He was halfway through pulling out his licorice root when fangs sunk into his back. Poison coursed through his veins and he couldn’t have stopped the scream he let out even if he’d wanted to. 

“Caleb?” Jester frantically asked. 

He turned to see Jester with her eyes wide open, mirror at her side staring directly into the face of the basilisk.

No. No no no no. He felt as though his stomach turned to stone as he saw her boots changing from brown to grey. 

“Jester!” he called out, “Jester, look away!” 

She turned towards him, whispering an incantation, and he felt the familiar warmth of her divine healing. But that brought little comfort as he was helpless to stop the grey stone crept up her legs and to her waist. 

And then her chest. 

And her fingers.

And her arms.

“Cay-leb, I’m sorry about-“

And then her head was stone, a grey statue of the saddest sort. Jester was gone. A statue, and nothing more. Her beautiful features there but frozen in the worst moment she could have been in. Not laughing, not smiling, not destroying the enemy with her fury, not even pooping, which would have been much more fitting than where she was now. No, she was frozen apologizing to him, the man least deserving of it.

Fury rose from inside him like fire, melting the stone inside him and rising to the surface. Pulling dust from his component pouch, he screamed the verbal component of the disintegrate spell, tracing the dust up his arm. 

The basilisk began to turn to ash, floating gently away on the breeze until there was nothing left of it at all. The only signs that it had ever been here were the half-destroyed statues and the perfect, still unmarred stone form of Jester Lavorre. 

“Fix her!” he cried, pointing at her with a trembling (when had that happened?) hand. 

Everyone was staring at him, but none of them were moving. They needed to move. They needed to fix this. They needed to bring her back. 

“Caduceus!” he shouted, not even trying to hold back the tears that were clouding his vision, “Get the- get the residuum and fix this!” 

“Wait, I have this oil!” Veth cried, emerging from the trees, “Save the residuum for something else.”

“Das ist mir scheißegal!” he shouted, “Just-just get her back!”

His view of the Jester statue was blocked as Yasha stepped in front of him. She bent down slightly so that she could whisper into his ear.

“Hey,” she whispered, “Do you trust us?”

“I-I-I,” he stammered, “Let me see her.”

Yasha did not budge. 

“Do you want her to see you like this?”

He faltered. No. No, of course he did not want to see him like this. She had far too much on her plate already without worrying about the likes of him.

Too late, a voice inside him hissed, remembering her thinly masked sadness as she took care of him earlier in the week.

Instead of focusing on that, he pulled out a cocoon from his component pouch.

“I’ll meet you at the ship,” he promised before transforming himself into a seagull.

****

The grey stone shattered around her, and Jester gasped for air as if she was making up for lost time. Oh my gods, that was scary. She did not want to do that again.

“How do you feel, Jester?” Veth asked, staring up at her, a hand still on her leg.

How did she feel? That was certainly a question. Adrenaline still coursed through her despite the danger being gone, and she couldn’t catch her breath. So instead of answering, she glanced around at her friends.

Veth was right at her side, staring up at her in concern, but otherwise looking fine. Beau and Yasha were approaching, no injuries visible but completely covered in dust. Fjord had gotten bitten once at the very beginning of the fight, but that was really his only injury, and Caduceus was already working on healing it. 

Oh shit, where was Caleb? 

Where was the basilisk? 

“Did it get Caleb? Where is it? Where did they go?” she asked, frantically scanning the beach for any sign of either of them.

“Jes, this is the basilisk,” Beau said, wiping the dusty ash from her face, “Caleb, uh, fucking destroyed it.”

Her heart skipped a beat, but she couldn’t process that now because where the fuck was Caleb?

She scanned the beach again, but the only new thing that she noticed was a seagull circling around them all. As she watched it fly above them, it squawked at them. Caduceus nodded.

“You’re right, we should get going,” he told the bird.

The bird squawked in seeming reply before flying off towards the sea. 

Jester stared at the bird in disbelief. There was no way-no, he couldn’t be that mad at her, could he? She didn’t even know what she had done to hurt him, and at this point, she doubted if she ever would. 

A cold, distancing sadness possessed her as she trudged back to their little rowboat, not saying a word as they took off. She was really, truly hopeless, wasn’t she? No matter how hard she tried to not be so forward with her crushes, she still managed to fuck it up somehow. 

As they climbed back onto The Balleater, Jester stared down at her own hands. They had been stone not too long ago, which felt totally surreal. She glanced around at the rest of the group, who were all watching her. There was an air of fear around them, like they thought she was about to crack like a porcelain doll.

She didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of being right. 

“I’m going to go sketch up in the crows nest,” she said, hoping she sounded more okay than she felt. 

“Jes-“ Beau began, but Jester pushed past her and began making her way to the crows nest. As she climbed higher and higher, she felt tears begin to fall so that by the time she entered the cushioned crows nest, she was barely holding back full-fledged sobs.

A familiar gull landed on the edge of the crows nest.

“Go away, Caleb,” she muttered.

There was a moment where the gull simply stared at her, and Jester half expected Caleb to transform back into himself and begin talking to her. 

She kind of hoped he would.

But instead, the gull took off, and with its departure, the tears began falling harder and she was helpless to stop them. How could she? She was a failure on all levels: as a suitor, as a friend, as a cleric.

Why did she even bother? 

****

The gull flew to the bow of the ship, where Caleb let go of the spell. He was nauseous, but it had nothing to do with the rocking of the boat or the poison still in his veins. It was as though his mind was still up in the crows nest, still on the beach staring at the statue.

He needed to fix this.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed it! Please tell me if you did!


End file.
